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The second dimension of the crisis is that the weakening of our geopolitical “hard power” has been paralleled by deterioration at the level of soft power as well. The NED has published a collection of
essays
entitled
Authoritarianism Goes Global
that describes how Russia, China, and other authoritarian countries are using sophisticated soft-power techniques and multilateral coalitions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to subvert the global norms contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to replace them with the norm of unlimited state sovereignty. They’re also trying to neutralize and control civil society by passing very restrictive NGO laws and cutting indigenous civil society groups off from any international assistance. And as already noted, they’re using hackers, trolls, and other instruments to subvert the integrity of the media space in Europe and elsewhere to spread confusion and division and to undermine the institutions of the West. Autocratic regimes are also trying to weaken global election norms by stacking international monitoring delegations with what are quaintly called “zombie” monitors who sign off on fraudulent elections.

Of greatest concern is the third dimension of the problem, which is the crisis of democratic values and will in the established democracies of the West. This crisis has been gathering momentum since the financial collapse almost a decade ago and the subsequent problems of economic stagnation and dysfunctional governance. More recently it has taken the form of a backlash against globalization, the rise of populism and illiberal politics in Europe and the United States, and the emergence of what Ivan Krastev, in the current issue of the
Journal of Democracy,
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“counterrevolutionary democracy,” which he links to “a world of vast inequalities and open borders, [where] migration becomes the new form of revolution.” Last week George Freeman, the head of the British Prime Minister’s Policy Board, said that the US election and the Brexit vote were linked by the failure of the globalized economy to serve the interests of average workers, adding that “a genuine crisis of legitimacy [is] sweeping through Western political economy.”

Since it is the democratic West that has built the security, political, and economic institutions that constitute the liberal world order and that have produced unprecedented peace and prosperity over the past seven decades, this crisis of legitimacy now threatens to shake the foundations of contemporary global civilization.

We have grown complacent about our democracy, assuming that its survival is inevitable and that it doesn’t need constant care and civic engagement. Last July NED published an
article
in its
Journal of Democracy
by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk that was ominously entitled “The Danger of the Deconsolidation.” It contains some very alarming statistics about the attitudes of young people towards democracy that show that democratic commitment declines with age. Young people, in other words, show less commitment to democracy than their parents and grandparents.